An
autonomous system is a computational system that performs a desired
task, often without human guidance. We use varying degrees of autonomy
in robotic systems for manufacturing, exploration of planets and space
debris, water treatment, ambient sensing, and even cleaning floors. This
blog post discusses practical autonomous systems that we are actively
developing at the SEI. Specifically, this post focuses on a new research
effort at the SEI called Self-governing Mobile Adhocs with Sensors and
Handhelds (SMASH) that is forging collaborations with researchers,
professors, and students with the goal of enabling more effective
search-and-rescue crews.

It’s undeniable that the field of software architecture has grown during the past 20 years. In 2010, CNN/Money magazine identified "software architect" as the most desirable job in the U.S.
Since 2004, the SEI has trained people from more than 900 organizations
in the principles and practices of software architecture, and more than
1,800 people have earned the SEI Software Architecture Professional certificate.
It is widely recognized today that architecture serves as the blueprint
for both the system and the project developing it, defining the work
assignments that must be performed by design and implementation teams.
Architecture is the primary purveyor of system quality attributes, which
are hard to achieve without a unifying architecture; it’s also the
conceptual glue that holds every phase of projects together for their
many stakeholders. This blog posting—the final installment in a series—provides lightly edited transcriptions of presentations by Jeromy Carriere and Ian Gorton at a SATURN 2012 roundtable, “Reflections on 20 Years of Software Architecture.”

A
malicious program disrupts computer operations, gains access to private
computational resources, or collects sensitive information. In February
2012, nearly 300 million malicious programs were detected, according to
a report compiled by SECURELIST.
To help organizations protect against malware, I and other researchers
at the SEI have focused our efforts on trying to determine the origin of
the malware. In particular, I’ve recently worked with my colleagues—Arie Gurfinkel, who works with me in the SEI’s Research, Technology, & System Solutions Program, and Cory Cohen, a malware analyst with the CERT Program—to
use the semantics of programming languages to determine the origin of
malware. This blog post describes our exploratory research to derive
precise and timely actionable intelligence to understand and respond to
malware.

The Department of Defense (DoD) has become deeply and fundamentally reliant on software. As a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC),
the SEI is chartered to work with the DoD to meet the challenges of
designing, producing, assuring, and evolving software-reliant systems in
an affordable and dependable manner. This blog post—the first in a
multi-part series—outlines key elements of the forthcoming SEI Strategic
Research Plan that addresses these challenges through research and
acquisition support and collaboration with DoD, other federal agencies,
industry, and academia.